In one of these streets, the cleanest of them all, and on the shady
side of the way--for good housewives know that sunlight damages their
cherished furniture, and so choose the shade rather than its intrusive
glare--there stood the house with which we have to deal. It was a modest
building, not very straight, not large, not tall; not bold-faced, with
great staring windows, but a shy, blinking house, with a conical roof
going up into a peak over its garret window of four small panes of
glass, like a cocked hat on the head of an elderly gentleman with one
eye. It was not built of brick or lofty stone, but of wood and plaster;
it was not planned with a dull and wearisome regard to regularity,
for no one window matched the other, or seemed to have the slightest
reference to anything besides itself.

The shop--for it had a shop--was, with reference to the first floor,
where shops usually are; and there all resemblance between it and any
other shop stopped short and ceased. People who went in and out didn't
go up a flight of steps to it, or walk easily in upon a level with the
street, but dived down three steep stairs, as into a cellar. Its floor
was paved with stone and brick, as that of any other cellar might be;
and in lieu of window framed and glazed it had a great black wooden flap
or shutter, nearly breast high from the ground, which turned back in
the day-time, admitting as much cold air as light, and very often more.
Behind this shop was a wainscoted parlour, looking first into a paved
yard, and beyond that again into a little terrace garden, raised some
feet above it. Any stranger would have supposed that this wainscoted
parlour, saving for the door of communication by which he had entered,
was cut off and detached from all the world; and indeed most strangers
on their first entrance were observed to grow extremely thoughtful, as
weighing and pondering in their minds whether the upper rooms were only
approachable by ladders from without; never suspecting that two of